Posts Tagged ‘Koel Purie’

PhotoShop™ is a crucial piece of software in the laptops of Indian celebrities—and Botox™ a vital vial in their make-up kit—especially when they have to deal with a newspaper or magazine profile. And brave is the bold-faced name that appears in print with neither weapon having been deftly employed to perform its optical illusions.

And this week’s issue of the weekly newsmagazine carries a spunky three-page excerpt of the Oxford mom-of-two’s journey from “fat to fabulous”; from an “ugly duckling” of 103 kg (in picture, left) to a “beautiful swan” of 59 kg (right) in three years flat (all adjectives courtesy the author).

An accompanying infographic tracks the “fatline” of the pioneering publisher’s daughter at various stages of her life:

Age 4: weight 32 kg, jam toast diet

Age 16: 63 kg, garbage soup diet

Age 24: 59 kg, coconut water diet

Age 35: 103 kg, the panjari ladoo diet

Age 38: weight 59 kg, the champagne diet

Kalli details the 46 diets that made her lose 45 kg, to slip from a size 18 to a size 8, and explains the role love played as an antidote: “Love is a super motivator. I stuck to a (weight-loss) programme because I had a deadline, a loveline.”

“My brother-in-law is French. He drinks champagne like the English drink tea. Anytime, anywhere. He would come for tea to the house it would be the standard chai-samosa-jalebi affair. When I asked what he would like to drink he would look uncomfortable for a moment, look at my sister (Koel Purie) for reassurance and when she sighed with resignation, he would say ‘Champagne, please!’ At four in the afternoon!

“For as long as I can remember, our traditional Sunday family lunch has been chicken biryani and parantha, a menu handed down over generations. There have been many aberrations but since the inclusion of a Frenchman in the family, champagne has become an essential addition to the Sunday routine. It is now a family tradition. As a result I have become a champagneholic. And that is the origin of this diet.”

End result: today people often ask Kalli, ‘Hey, where did you leave the rest of you?’

After being badgered left, rightandcentre online for his jetlag-inspired plagiarism, India Today editor-in-chief Aroon Purie finally gets some old-fashioned good press, courtesy the “dirty old man of Indian journalism”.

“Her grandfather Vidya Vikas Puri, migrated from Lahore after partition in 1947, and set up business as a financier in Delhi. He became a multi-millionaire. He decided to buy himself a Rolls Royce which was, and is, the ultimate status symbol of success. He went to London to get one.

“The salesman of the showroom snubbed him and told him he could not afford it and not to waste his time. He bought one, brought it to Delhi. At that time only descendants of erstwhile princely families drove in chauffeurs-driven Rolls Royces.

“Puri was the only commoner driving one on Delhi roads.

“His son Aroon added an ‘e’ to his surname and became a legend in his life time. He owns the largest chain of media consortiums in India: four TV channels, over a dozen weeklies, including India Today, Reader’s Digest, Harper Collins and The Thompson Press to print his journals and books. A new addition is the tabloid daily Mail Today.

“Aroon is as generous an employer as he is ruthless towards those who fail to deliver the goods.

“A case in point is the ‘elevation’ of Prabhu Chawla, his subjantawala [the man who knows everything] editor of India Today and get M.J. Akbar on Akbar’s terms to take and run it, as he sensed it was losing on its readability to Frontline, The Week, above all, to Outlook*.”